Welcome

Welcome to GPS Essentials, the Swiss Army knife of GPS navigation on your Android phone. This document gives you a brief overview of what you can (and cannot) do with GPS Essentials. You will rarely find step-by-step instructions here. Please also have a look into the help pages available within the app if you run into problems.

When we started with GPS Essentials, Android was the new kid on the block and we wanted to see how cool it really is. So we put together a satellite sky view, a map and a waypoint database and called it GPS Essentials. Both Android and GPS Essentials grew up since then, and we proudly present what we believe is the most universal GPS tool that you can get for your mobile device.

GPS Essentials is used by pedestrians, car drivers, motorcyclists, mountain bikers, geocachers, pilots, geologists, sailors, truckers, farmers, fishermen, just to mention a few. When we receive feedback from our users we notice that they all have their specific requirements and demands. Still, we believe if you want to get from A to B then GPS Essentials can do better than most specialized apps.

This effort to write a guide to GPS Essentials comes from many user requests asking for more information than is accessible in the in-app help. It is meant for users that are new to GPS Essentials and who are a bit overwhelmed by its complexity, and for everyone who wants to know what is behind a screen.

Get Familiar With Android

We are not teaching you how to use Android based phones and tablets but we will assume that you know how to handle your device. For example, when you export data to a file on your device, you have to know how to find that file again or send it to a different place, such as your desktop computer. If you are an Android beginner, please take some time to dive into Android before you start using GPS Essentials.

GPS Essentials is one of the complex apps. Most apps deal with one specific thing and they do it well. If you have an app to find your car where you parked it, you will probably learn how to use this app while you are using it for the first time. You can also find your car with GPS Essentials, but things will be less intuitive. On the other hand, you can save the parking lot and get back there the next time you drive downtown.

About This Manual

The intention of this manual is to give you detailed background information about the internals of GPS Essentials to unveil its full potential and at the same time let you quickly find a way to perform common tasks. Bear with us, this is not easy.

If you are interested in step-by-step instructions on a specific task, look for the 📱 symbol.

🚧 As all good manuals, this document is work in progress. In most situations it’s better to have an incomplete manual than no manual at all, and so we released this one while some sections look like an early draft.

Labs

Some parts of GPS Essentials are being rebuilt. You can try the new versions before they are released by turning on Try New Features under Labs in Settings. With Labs on, the Portable Maps button opens the new map, and the Camera button opens the camera that draws the map and your data into the picture. Turn it off to go back to the classic map and camera.

This manual describes both. Where a screen looks or works differently with Labs on, the chapter says so.

Support

If things are not working as you expect, you can ask for help. The app has its own help: open the navigation drawer and tap Help, and you get the page for the screen you are on. Visit www.gpsessentials.com for the latest information. There is a support forum on groups.google.com/g/gpsessentials where you can ask questions, request new features and comment.

If you need a personal word, send an email to michael@mictale.com. Please be as precise as you can: if you can reproduce the problem, tell us how; if you cannot, tell us how often it occurs. We’ll try to respond as soon as we can, please understand that we cannot guarantee response times.

Training Videos

GPS Essentials has its own video channel on YouTube. Visit youtube.com/user/GpsEssentialsApp for a set of brief screencasts.

Installation

The quickest way to install GPS Essentials is to scan the following QR code with your device:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mictale.gpsessentials

The link will open the Google Play app on your phone so that you can download and install GPS Essentials with a few taps.

Google Play installs updates as soon as they are available. The latest version of GPS Essentials usually contains important fixes, please ensure that you have the most recent version. To find out what's new after an update, look for the “Upgraded to …” message in Messages.

Storage

GPS Essentials stores information in a database on your device and in application preferences. The database holds all objects that are relevant for navigation such as waypoints, tracks, routes, pictures, tags and messages. Nothing is uploaded anywhere unless you export or share it yourself.

You choose where the database is kept in Settings under Storage Location. When GPS Essentials starts without a usable storage location, for example after an upgrade of Android, it asks you for one, and it can import your data from the previous location. Storage Setup in Settings shows how much space the data takes, sets a limit for cached map tiles and can repair the database.

To keep a backup of your data, export your streams to files (see Export in the Streams chapter). Android's own backup saves your settings, but not your waypoints, tracks, routes and pictures.